The present invention relates in general to digital processing, and more specifically, to a service allowing dynamic computer environments to be remotely managed using techniques that are agnostic of hardware and software vendors.
Today's network approach provides computing resources and digital content, or information, to users on a massive scale. The use of networked computers, and other processing devices, have taken the tedium out of day-to-day activities in almost every area of contemporary life such as in education, commerce, business, and entertainment. However, the installation, day-to-day maintenance and administration of these networks have become tedious tasks that are not cost-effective.
For instance, a web search engine site, visited by millions of users each day, may use a network of several hundreds of server computers. The site needs to update content and software applications in its servers at regular intervals. These updates may trigger reboots of the system or require updates of the operating system to match newer versions of the applications. In addition, these “server farms” may not be hosted conveniently in the confines of the search engine's site. They may be hosted in a data center where physical access may be a premium and an unwanted intrusion. Therefore, a service to remotely administer the search engine's servers is desired.
In a different example of a “distributed content delivery system” serving a multitude of web sites, the server farm is parceled into smaller farms and located in far-flung geographical areas. To remain scalable, these services need “regular” additional installations to their server farms in addition to keeping up with revisions or patches to existing servers or other hardware and operating systems running on these servers. To meet the demands of several millions of customers a day, service providers need to reduce the average “down-time” of individual servers. To achieve these goals with the conflicting constraints that go along with them, service providers desire a robust solution that will reduce the cost and complexity of their routine maintenance effort.